Difference Between Cooking & Baking

Video Transcript

"There is a big distinction between being a cook and being a baker. With all due respect, cooking is not a science. baking is all about science. To give you an example, if you put too much yeast in a bread, for example, it will rise and it will go over your pan and it will be all over your oven. If you don't put enough salt in it, if you put right amount of yeast but do not put enough salt in it, salt controls the yeast controls the growth of the yeast, it will rise and it will fall. So ounces of yeast will make a big difference, ounces of salt will make a big difference. How warm your room temperature that you're making the bread makes a big difference. Summer time, to give you an example, summer time, our formula for our bread calls, for example our French roll, calls for two gallons of just ice in the dough. You want it to be at seventy degrees. If it's too warm the yeast will get activated and the end result will not look good, because there is no more yeast in there to make the bread rise. Do you use thermometers. You don't use, you feel the dough by, by after years of experience you kind of know what the temperature of the dough is. You could put thermometers in but we don't. We kind of know. We put the our hand inside the dough and we know. If it's too warm the yeast is activating already so we got to cut it fast and throw it in the oven as fast as possible. If you put too much sugar the yeast will get activated and it will mess up your bread. So temperature, yeast, salt, all those ingredients that you're dealing with ounces at a time makes a huge difference in the end result. So you have every right to mess up your breads because you haven't been really taught how to make it. It's a science."